Reporters on the Job

AT LEAST THEY HAVE TIES ON: High school boys in Chuncheon, South Korea, cheered their senior classmates taking aptitude tests – given nationally on Thursday – to get into a university.

Lee Sang-Hak/Yonhap/Reuters

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• Will I Be Stood Up Again? As part of her reporting about Brazil's national oil company, staff writer Sara Miller llana went to visit a offshore oil drilling platform. She was impressed by the company. But a previous encounter made her initially skeptical. "The first time I dealt with Petrobras, about a year and a half ago, I was told that a trip to the middle of the Amazon to see a massive pipeline had been approved. I flew there, arrived on schedule, only to discover that the pipeline trip was canceled for no apparent reason, " says Sara.

This time, she had a backup plan. The day before she was supposed to visit the Petrobras oil platform, she still didn't have any details. "So, I went ahead with Plan B: to visit a town booming as a byproduct of Petrobras's success. As I was wrapping up interviews there, I got a call from Petrobras to rush back to Rio. I nearly missed the opportunity. I'm not sure how I'll approach my next Petrobras appointment," Sara says.

• Arrest Me, Please! Staff writer Scott Baldauf met Gen. Laurent Nkunda at his headquarters last year. "Local citizens were firm supporters of General Nkunda and many remembered him as a schoolteacher. Nkunda struck me as very self-assured and charismatic, every inch the Seventh Day Adventist preacher, " says Scott.

But on the trip back to the government-held capital of Goma (see story), Scott's caravan of journalists met a very different reaction. "We almost got stoned by a mob that had set up a roadblock, waiting for us. People in government-held territory hated Nkunda, as many of them were personally displaced by his troops and thought that anyone who went to visit Nkunda must be a supporter. Police detained us – and I must say that I have never been so happy to be taken into police custody (and out of harm's way) as I was on that day."